Wednesday, November 2, 2011

That Time I Went to El Salvador

I suck at blog updating, I know. It seems that I have a lot of time to write during certain periods and absolutely none during others. Such is the college life, I guess but I'm going to make an effort to try to be more regular, or at least schedule the posts to come out at different times so I don't become THAT blogger. ANYWAY, in May (I know, it's been so long) I was able to go to San Salvador, El Salvador on a school trip to represent the United States. Some highlights:

I got to experience the Party Bus. It picked us up at the airport, and it was a refurbished old school bus with a black ceiling, strobe lights INSIDE, some crazy painting outside and it blasted music the entire time it went 90 mph down a winding mountain. In the rain. Yeah.

Our hotel was beautiful and had a breathtaking view.

Much like the nearby architecture.

I got to scale a volcano, tiptoe the Honduran border and see a crater that used to be a lake :) Look at that orange flower growing there all by itself. Individuality, folks.

I got to see the whole town of San Salvador (not featured. This is obviously only one part of it)

And then all of El Salvador in a tiny scale model the government had built!

I met new people...

and gave a very, VERY rough speech in Spanish in front of a bunch of native speakers. It was so much harder than you would believe.

Of course, I ate some DELICIOUS food. Please don't let the green tamale fool you. It was all unbelievably good. I am still on the hunt for popusas.

I met my first ever black sand beach,

stuck my toes in the Pacific and consequently, fell onto these rocks,

shopped at a Mayan market,

danced the night away the night the world was supposed to end to an odd mix of Spanish and English music on a club with an open bar and an entire wall that was actually a balcony and overlooked the entire city,

and met this guy. We were running late to the airport because the school we were supposed to be sharing a bus with was running late. This MILITARY ESCORT pops up (his truck says: Division for the Protection of Important Peoples. YEAH. Important people) and starts blocking off roads so that we don't have to stop for traffic. There are about three of these trucks on all of our sides and we're running red lights, hitting cars (!!! One of the police trucks pulled aside to console the shocked owner) and escorted our bus (THAT WAS PUSHING 100 MPH. A SCHOOL. BUS.) on the same windy mountain until we, not surprisingly, got to the airport on time. Did I mention they were waving massive guns at people who didn't get out of our way? Very cool. Very scary. Probably won't ever happen to me again.

And that, in a nutshell, was my time in El Sal :) It was a gorgeous country and when I get the chance, I will be back. I am a sucker for traveling and now, for black sand beaches.